1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a wire harness fixing structure in which a wire harness is fixed, the wire harness electrically connecting a sensor that is installed in a cooling medium tank provided with a cooling medium relief valve, to a connection terminal that is located beyond the cooling medium relief valve as viewed from a position where the sensor is installed.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally, in order to cool an object such as a rotating electrical machine, there has been known a cooling structure in which a cooling medium is stored in a tank, and a cooling medium relief valve that is provided in the cooling medium tank is opened to inject the cooling medium onto the object. In the cooling structure, various sensors may be installed in the cooling medium tank in order to monitor the temperature, the remaining amount, the viscosity and the like of the cooling medium in the cooling medium tank. A wire harness for transmitting/receiving electric signals is attached to one end of each of the sensors. The other end of the wire harness is connected to a connection terminal such as an electric circuit.
The sensor and the connection terminal may be located on respective sides of the cooling medium relief valve due to various restrictions on design. In the case of this arrangement, the wire harness may extend in the immediate vicinity of or directly above the cooling medium relief valve when the wire harness bends or undulates to a certain extent. When the wire harness extends in the immediate vicinity of or directly above the cooling medium relief valve, the cooling medium injected from the cooling medium relief valve may directly hit the wire harness. As a result, the flow of the injected cooling medium may be hindered, and the wire harness may be damaged.
Conventionally, some brackets that regulate the wiring route for such a wire harness have been proposed. For example, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2007-244025 (JP 2007-244025 A) discloses a technology in which a terminal block of a stator is provided with a connection wire guide that presses down a lead wire extending from a thermistor and that retains the lead wire at a position spaced apart from a stator terminal of a rotating electrical machine, in order to restrain the lead wire of the thermistor from interfering with the stator terminal. However, according to the Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2007-244025 (JP 2007-244025 A), only the regulation of the wiring route for the lead wire in the vicinity of the terminal block is taken into account, and the wiring route in the vicinity of the cooling medium relief valve is not taken into account.
Further, it has been proposed to attach a sensor 12 to a cooling medium tank through the use of a bracket 50 as shown in FIG. 5, and to regulate the route of a wire harness 10 in the vicinity of a cooling medium relief valve. However, as shown in FIG. 5, the bracket 50 in the related art simply presses down the wire harness 10 from above, and thus, the wire harness 10 cannot be sufficiently prevented from moving toward the cooling medium relief valve.